** This was supposed to be put up on the day I put up my last post but well, here goes!**
It's such a pity when I look back to yesteryears and remember with nostalgia the relationship we had with our neighbours while growing up....we lived in an small estate with 3 flats. Tere were 3 families living in them and they were allocated to staff of a particular company...the first flat belonged to a Yoruba family, they were Muslims and the family was young......their first kid was younger than the last child in my family by about 3 years and they were 3 kids in all....the second belonged to an Ibo family with 3 kids and a step-sister...the eldest daughter was as old as my eldest brother, the second was the same age as my immediate elder brother and the third was my age......my family lived in the last flat. We had 4 bedrooms and a living room.I recall that no matter how much my mum reminded us not to eat at the neighbours or anywhere else for that matter, we still ate at the neighbours and we all played around together like one happy family. Of course we ran indoors, each to our separate homes when we heard the honk of any of the parents' cars but we were sure to resume play in the bus on our way to school the following day.....
Even our parents were on friendly terms with one another....the man in flat 1 and my dad worked at the company's head office in Port Harcourt and the mum in flat 2 was a nurse at the company's clinic. This was all in the '80's...
Nowadays, relationships with our neighbours are cordial at best and conversations with neighbours are such a drag! Everyone wants to have their own space and every one's mantra seems to be "keep your nose outta my business"...Such is the relationship between my family and my neighbours......try hard as our kids did to forge a bond, us parents kept tugging at them, get back in! and discouraged any friendship between the girls....we even got to the point of having silly issues because of this and that...
My neighbour is a single mother of a 1 year old, and in true Island style, we do not speak to each other. Only to the children, and then to offer an exaggerated Hellooo and Byeeee! I rarely even give a second glance or wonder what is happening in her home and I'm sure the same indifference is accorded to me and mine.
From the little I can claim to know of her, I see her as someone whose priorities do not happen to be her child but rather are elsewhere.....far, far, away in a place I know nothing of. She rarely sleeps at home - ask me how I know? Her car's usually not at home at nights and she comes in the evenings for a bit and takes off after sometime. I happened to notice on a few occasions that her help left late in the evenings and came back to work in the wee hours of the morning, say 5:30am. I saw that happen about 5 or 6 times and thought nothing of it. Fast forward to last week Thursday. My neighbour came home in the evening as usual, did her thing, left.....she returned again very late, say about midnight 'discovered' her daughter was alone at home..... checked everywhere, didn't see her help. She settled in for the night and Miss. thing returns at 5:30am sharp the following day......to welcome a very unlikely sight....her madam's car!
Drama everywhere.....girlfriend comes out...yelling...so this is what you do eh? I pay you and you leave my baby at home at go out to sleep with men! I will kill you today! You want to destroy my life....So much drama.....That was when the pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me....so the girl wasn't a come in the morning, leave in the evening kinda help? And the baby was in the house all the time when she went out? I really felt like an evil person when I pieced all that happened together, I knew that it would never have happened if we were more cordial to each other and the girl took advantage of the fact that we weren't friends with her madam and threw all caution to the wind...but even my neighbour herself was partly to blame! How dare you leave your child to the maid like everyday? I'd always assumed her daughter was wherever she was putting up, never for a moment thought she was left at home with the help....
So many what ifs clouded my mind but the one that struck the most was the decline of good relationships with our neighbours in so the called high brow areas....it's sad really, to think we live in a time when your neighbour would see your child going astray and instead of correcting him or her, would look the other way. It's such a crying shame!
What is the meaning of a neighbour I ask? It it merely the person who lives a little distance away from you? Shouldn't it mean much more than that? I remeber while growing up, we didn't dare to be naughty around my neighbours parents because they could discipline us as good as our parents, but nowadays? The essence of the word Neighbour seems to be extinct!
